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E-governance – A layman’s understanding

If I had read correctly, The National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology had some tie-up with Intel to educate women about e-governance and get them job ready.

Which I feel is a great initiative and should even involve young men looking for a career option.

Having a digitally relevant population will definitely be a bragging point apart from obviously adding to the skilled manpower of the country.

At this point one may raise an argument about how a certain percent of population are illiterate, starving, which is a stressful point, but just because certain problems are being ignored (which they shouldn’t be) does not mean other problems should not be tackled.

That was a very complex sentence, I know. But so was the argument, so deal with it.

Around this time last year, I had reviewed a social media campaign about e-governance; #etreatdit. Though the campaign wasn’t perfect, it was a fresh change by the Government marketing standards and thus was a welcomed one.

Even then I had expressed thoughts how India is growing in the online space. With more and more people coming online; marketeers have found a nice medium to reach to potential customers. And with resources like shopping, travelling, ordering food, among other things moving online and finding a huge customer-base; it has opened up a lot of avenues for more products and services to be sold/provided online.

Why shouldn’t our necessary Government tasks be online? The beautiful Jaago Re campaign popularised making voter ids online. Distance education with various Indian education boards have gone online and thus hassle-free (I speak of experience). And in recent times I believe even the RTO license making services have gone online.

Yes, one may think their data is vulnerable as it goes online, but to take up great responsibility requires great power (Yes, Reverse-Spiderman) So it is a given for us to trust the data encryptions and secure login systems to indulge in such services. Because hey, the Government knows everything they need to know about you anyway, so why fear?

How does e-governance help us? What do we get in return of all of this? Well, convenience.

Imagine the time we spend standing in lines and queues, interacting with people who most probably don’t care about your requirement. All that magically goes away! And this was just the icing on the cake, the big momma of all reasons of how e-governance is the next step to an improved India is… *drumrolls*

Elimination of corruption! No bribing, manipulating (or getting manipulated) to get stuff done. You do your bit online and the Government does the rest. So no people jumping queues and going ahead of you. Unless you’re the Government Servant-bribing queue-jumper, you shouldn’t have anything to complain about!

Well, this was just what I picked up from e-governance. And frankly, it’s all I care about knowing at this moment as long as this #DigitalIndia movement improves our lives as citizens.